a common DVB infrastructure

Hi All,
About myself: i do some freelance development with regards to DVB, as of
till date it has been with regards to Linux-DVB as a whole.
Intention:
I do write this post in the regards that a cross platform DVB API can
exist, which can be used under other platforms as well.
This platform should eventually be backward compatible for existing
systems.
I do understand that, for an older system it can be made practical to
have a compatible layer to do a translation. But in the case of a newer
system, there will be newer parameters etc.
In such a case, in the case of a newer system, what about the usability
with existing applications, as they need to select something new.
In the case of older systems, i was made aware that proplib is used with
BSD with a key-tag approach which sounds practical. In the case of Linux
this is not available. As far as i have asked people around they do not
prefer a library to interface with the kernel IOCTL's but would like to
use the ioctl's directly. This has been seen with the ALSA driver
subsystem under Linux, where people do hate that userspace library.
This is one case where i am lost.
Another aspect is the area where the GPL vs BSD licenses do clash.
For example some vendors (hardware manufacturers) do state the work
being done with their support be GPL'd. This happens to exist for some
new drivers that i happen to work upon.
Thoughts ?
Regards,
Manu